Thursday, November 29, 2012

The New Soap Dish Post (And TV Painting)

Okay, fair warning, today’s post is going to be something darn close to, umm, really stupid. But I’m kind of excited about it. I have just a couple of very unrelated things, but they both are related to some old posts and they both came about today sort of completely by themselves. So today is just going to be a kind of very old fashioned blog post where I simply talk for a moment about a couple of things that happened today. But the couple of things made me kind of excited.

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I should say, too, that I don’t know exactly why—possibly too much sugar and caffeine, or possibly too much processed food with hidden wheat products, or possibly all those things—but I’ve been kind of under-the-weather for the last couple of weeks. I have had some feeling good days, but I also have had some days where I’ve been running a fever and some days where various muscles and joints have been hurting me and some days where my stomach has been upset and some days where I’ve had a splitting headache. I suspect it’s a combination of some kind of allergy reaction and, generally, just getting old.

I’m talking about my health because today I’ve been feeling pretty good so my getting excited over two little and completely obscure personal things may be more about my health than the actual things that have gotten me excited. I don’t know. But there you go.

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Okay, first of all, I’ve talked about soap a few times here on the blog. And in real life I now and then talk about soap, too.

A couple of years ago I looked around all over trying to find one of those little plastic containers for traveling with a bar of soap. I couldn’t find one anywhere. Finally I think I found one at some dollar store and I’ve kept a bar of Coast soap in the container pretty much non-stop. I shower every day and I take long showers and I go through a lot of soap. But Coast doesn’t cost much. (FYI, Coast soap is celebrating being around for thirty-five years.)

But the little plastic container I finally found apparently was made of cheap plastic or something and it had little ridges and ribs embossed into and onto its surface and it became impossible to keep clean. That sounds kind of bizarre—it’s in the shower every morning getting wet, it has soap in it all day. But my little plastic soap container was getting rank with dirt and maybe even mold or something. No matter how carefully and how hard I tried to wash it, the little grooves in the surface created crevices that dirt and whatever could stick in. I just couldn’t clean it and it was bugging me.

But look. New soap dish:

Today I was in Walgreens and in the back they had a bin with a whole selection of soap boxes in different colors. My last soap box was yellow, so this time I went with clear.

I’m so happy. It only cost $2 and it’s almost like having a remodeled bathroom for me. A perfectly clean soap dish, and the surface is all smooth with no patterns, so I’m guessing it will be easy to clean.

This is the kind of thing that excites me.

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This is another kind of thing that excites me.

Although I’m feeling okay today, I’ve had a tough couple of weeks and when I’m feeling down I usually watch a lot of old episodes of the TV show “Smallville.” I’m not exactly proud of liking the show as much as I do, but nobody’s perfect.

Anyway, my favorite seasons of Smallville are seasons three and four and I usually go through them in sequence, episode by episode, as I get free time. So I’ve seen both of those complete seasons many times. An uncountable number of times.

But today I saw something that I’ve never seen before!

Not only have I watched all those episodes many times, but I’ve specifically watched certain episodes, and I’ve even posted screen-grabs from certain specific episodes. But from one of those episodes where I’ve posted two or three screen-grabs, today I saw something that I’ve always missed even though I once specifically posted about the very subject.

Before I show another screen-grab, look back at my post Lana Lang And “The Supervillain’s Nightclub” and notice the picture of Lex Luthor in the background. That’s a scene from when Lana is supposed to be studying art in Paris. (It’s some Canadian city doubling for Paris.)

And in my post Motion Beyond The Witch Point I talked about how when Lana was in Paris she does a rubbing of a tombstone in a church. I singled out that episode because I thought it was cool that the series actually showed someone making art.

Okay, that’s background.

Today I put in the DVD with that episode on it and hit play and I went over to take a photograph of my new soap dish while the episode was playing. And from the corner of my eye I saw the camera pan away from Lana-in-Paris to show some scenery and there was a close-up—just in passing—of a woman painting a picture!

She’s doing an en plein air painting with an easel setup outside and she has a palette on her hand and everything. Look (the image is a little blurred because the camera is literally panning past the artist to follow Lana walking behind the post):

And I just stopped what I was doing and hit rewind and freeze-frame and stared and thought, “What the hell, how have I missed this?”

I mean, I did a whole post talking about moments where characters are shown doing art, and somehow I missed an actual depiction of a woman creating a painting.

I know it’s probably impossible to think of anything more pointless than a passing camera move from a TV show that has been off the air for years (except maybe a new soap dish) but I was pretty excited to notice that bit of action in the episode.

Here in real life—such as it is—I’ve never seen anyone actually doing an en plein air painting. Not anywhere in Chicago like around the Art Institute or along the beautiful lakefront or at any of the museums or other tourist attractions.

But it’s cool seeing someone pretending to do a painting. It would be more cool to me if the modern world had stuff like this happening much more often in real life. Maybe we’ll get back to it someday. I don’t know.

I’m happy enough that my fantasy life got a little richer with a pretend image of someone doing art. It’s better than nothing.

Although I wonder about that. I’ll probably come back to that thought—is good fantasy better than bad reality?—and talk about it again.